


A New Girl at Alternia Towers

by gatty



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Boarding School, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-07-26
Updated: 2011-07-26
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:25:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gatty/pseuds/gatty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Kanaya Maryam arrives for her first term at Alternia Towers, she can only imagine the adventures that await. Between the impetuous new girl Vriska Serket and mysterious yet alluring head of house Rose Lalonde, the reality is so much more exciting - and hair-raising!</p>
            </blockquote>





	A New Girl at Alternia Towers

**Author's Note:**

> Brilliant art courtesy of the magnificent [Harry](http://owlpellets.tumblr.com/).

  
**  
The New Girl   
**   


Kanaya Maryam smoothed down her freshly pressed new green uniform dress and adjusted the purple belt. She had never worn a school uniform before, having been tutored at home by her mother. Her mother was an ex-suffragette and believed Kanaya’s formative education was served better by attending to the lectures of the local Fabian Society. She was nervous at the prospect of joining Alternia Towers in the Fifth Form, when all the other girls would already be firm friends, and know everything there was so know about school. But she was also excited for the adventures she would surely have! She had read cover to cover each issue of the Girls' Own Paper as it came out every month, and had devoured all the tales of jolly larks and plucky bravery. She was sure she knew what to expect from her time at Alternia Towers.

She thought the uniform to be charming, and told her mother so as they followed the porter carrying her trunk towards the train.

“My dear, you must not be shocked at the other girls' behaviour. They have had many years at school and will do all sorts of things we would never dream of doing at home. But if you make your friends wisely, and work hard, I’m sure Alternia Towers will be just as proud to have you as an Old Girl as I am to have you as my daughter.”

“Oh mother, don’t worry about me! I shall have a jolly time at Alernia Towers, I’m sure. All I need to do is adjust this hat. I do rather think the ribbon should be far bigger,” she commented, fingering the purple ribbon that ran around the crown of the boater, which formed the final piece of the Alternia Towers summer uniform.

“I’m sure you will,” her mother replied, smiling fondly.

Miss Mendicant, the form tutor of the Fifth, introduced herself and helped Kanaya stow her overnight bag in the compartment reserved for new girls. There were several first and second form age girls already ensconced in the corner seats, gnawing on lumps of chocolate. The station master blew his whistle and there was a sudden scurrying of girls onto the train. Her mother gave her a kiss on the forehead and promised to send on the Fabian publications she received, before disappearing to the crowd of parents.

Kanaya settled herself with her back to the engine, and took out a book, ready to work very hard at not being upset at leaving her comfortable life back home in The Rookery with her mother and the nice lady writers at the Fabian Society. However, she was interrupted in this by the loud and hurried arrival of another girl, who flung herself into the compartment just as the train began to pull out of the station. Her uniform was already a crumpled mess and her hat was affixed to the back of her head with a whole handful of hairgrips. Her hair was an unruly black mess that had almost entirely escaped the twin plaits into which it had been forced.

She stood up and surveyed the carriage, hands on hips.

“Thank goodness for that. I thought you lot were about to clear off without me!”

Miss Mendicant indicated for her to sit down, a small frown puckering the skin between her brows at the girl’s unconventional arrival.

“I assume you must be Vriska Serket.”

The girl, Vriska, gave her a worryingly broad grin. “That’s me!”

“I would hope in future to find you to be more punctual,” informed Miss Mendicant.

Vriska shrugged. “Sure. Hey, pipsqueak, hop it.”

She waived at a first former eating a cheese sandwich in the seat next to Kanaya. The girl paused long enough to gather up the packet of sandwiches on her lap before hurrying to another free seat. Vriska plopped down next to Kanaya, stretching out her long legs and yawning loudly. Kanaya studied her over the top of her book. The girl spoke in Americanisms straight out of the pictures Kanaya would walk to the next village over to watch screened in the village hall. She had never heard anyone speak like that in real life.

“You’re a new girl like me, aren’t you,” she drawled, eyeing Kanaya. “Vriska Serket.”

She stuck out her hand.

“Kanaya Maryam.”

Kanaya took the girl’s hand and had hers squeezed in an iron grip.

“Which house are you in?”

“Honeysuckle,” Kanaya replied, closing her book.

This girl was exciting and like no one she had met before. She supposed this must be the sort of thing her mother warned her about. It was tremendously thrilling.

“Oh worse luck! Honeysuckle haven’t won the house cup since before the Boer War. The first one! I’m in Buttercup. There was a Buttercup girl over in the studios in Hollywood, that’s why my people sent me here. Did I mention? I lived in America. My mother’s a film star. Or movie star, as we say over there. That’s why I’m joining so late. What’s your excuse?”

Kanaya’s eyes became round like saucers. A film star in America! She felt butterflies in her stomach talking to this girl. She seemed a little dangerous, but that just made Kanaya want to talk to her more. She blushed, thinking of her own dull reasons for being so late to join Alternia Towers.

“I was schooled at home,” she explained. “My mother didn’t think it was right to send children away at a young age…”

Vriska was yawning again, drawing Miss Mendicant’s frown. She flapped her hand in front of her mouth, then pillowed her arms behind her head, looking sideways up at Kanaya where she sat upright, book clutched on her lap.

“Oh don’t mind me! This train leaves so early! It is the most bothersome thing. Couldn’t wake up for the life of me, had to run all the way from the cabstand.”

“Oh…” Kanaya was blushing again. “You can go to sleep if you like. I’ll wake you up when we get there.”

Vriska grinned at her, making the butterflies in Kanaya’s stomach flutter about all over again.

“No fear! We have a lot to talk about. After all, you’re to be my new best friend!”

***

Things were terribly busy and confusing when they finally arrived at Alternia Towers. She and Vriska had talked the whole journey there, right up until they got off the motor coach and were sent to their separate dorms. Kanaya had suddenly found herself surrounded by a large group of chattering girls, all of whom she was too nervous to talk to. Vriska was the only other new girl of her age, and it seemed that the rest of the girls in the Fifth in Honeysuckle had all been there since first form. Rose Lalonde, the head of the house, assigned a quick witted girl called Terezi with a curious laugh to show her the ropes for the first few days. Rose Lalonde wore her hair in a style daringly close to a Marcel Wave, and was rarely seen about the common room. Kanaya had no idea where she went, but she struck her as a terribly knowing and mysterious figure. The purple sash offset her violet eyes, and Kanaya found herself thinking how lovely she must look out by the violets that covered one flower bed of the quad.

Trailing around after Terezi, she quickly got the hang of the school layout. The building was a square surrounding a central courtyard - the quad - where the older girls would spend the morning and lunch breaks sitting around on the benches and lawns, talking, reading letters from home, playing cards and so on. There was a tower on each corner, one for each house. In these towers were the dormitories - dormies - and the common room. All their lessons, save music, art, games and science subjects, were held in the same classroom, on the side nearest to Honeysuckle Tower. The fifth form classroom was large and airy, with tall windows that overlooked the lake. It was the start of the summer term, so all the other fifth formers had already claimed desks. The only two left were at the front, nearest the door. It was a little difficult to see the blackboard from that position, but Vriska thought it a great stroke of luck, for it meant she could dash into the class at the very last second and be at her desk in an instant.

Lessons weren’t too difficult; Kanaya thought she might actually be ahead in a few subjects. The only difficulty she had was in English, when she suggested that Wuthering Heights could be read as a Bildungsroman follwing Cathy’s indoctrination into acceptable female identity. Her comment had been met by a resounding silence, but Miss Questant had given her a small smile and awarded five points to Honeysuckle before directing the class back to the discussion of the description of nature in the novel.

Though Kanaya was slow to talk to her fellow classmates at first, it was not long before she knew the name of every girl in her form and in her house. Apart from Vriska and Terezi, there was the head of the fifth form, Jade, who, though she often seemed to be daydreaming, would always have the correct answer ready in class; a kind and cheerful girl called John, who was often responsible for ink pellets landing on people’s desks in the middle of prep, as she was rather keen on japes; a shy girl called Tavros, who would turn crimson when called upon to recite verbs in Latin; and a rather stuck up girl called Eridan, who wore her sash in the manner of a scarf whenever there were no teachers in sight.

She was with her form from prayers in the morning to prep and letter writing in the evening. Miss Mendicant was very strict about the writing home of letters and kept record of which girls had written letters and when. In class Kanaya sat behind Vriska, and watched the lesson from behind the bobbing cloud of hair in front of her. Terezi sat to Vriska’s side, and she often saw the two flagrantly passing notes. Kanaya didn’t want to ask what the notes were about lest she be labelled a sneak - the worst thing to be at Alternia Towers. Terezi seemed to be another forthright and daring girl, and Kanaya thought perhaps Vriska would prefer to be friends with someone who said exciting things and passed notes in class, rather than Kanaya, who drew hat designs in the margins of her notebook during prep.

But she needn’t have worried about losing Vriska as her best friend. Every break time, Vriska would take her arm and walk around the quad with her, telling her everything she had been thinking about the other girls in their form, about their teachers, their lessons, and the older girls in Buttercup. The head girl, Feferi, was in Buttercup House, and it seemed that all the girls were quite taken with her.

“Oh but you simply _must_ have a crush on an older girl,” Vriska had explained to her as they paraded past the begonias. “Everyone has a crush. Don’t you? I suppose you don’t know these things as you’ve led a sheltered village life, but you simply must have a crush. It’s the done thing.”

Kanaya found her thoughts wandering unprompted to Rose Lalonde. She had watched the head of the house while eating her soup at dinner the night before. Rose had eaten her soup so gracefully, barely spilling a drop. Her sister, Dave, would make a comment and Rose would laugh, a dry, laconic sound that made Kanaya dribble her soup into her lap.

Vriska was still talking, gesturing emphatically with the hand that was not tucked into the crook of Kanaya’s arm.

“I’ve not decided who my crush is yet. It’s rather a big decision, don’t you think? I mean, you can’t go swapping crushes halfway through the term. You’ve got to follow these things through.”

Kanaya nodded, not quite sure what she was agreeing with. Sometimes she thought she might have developed a crush on Vriska, but Vriska was in her form so it wasn’t quite the same. They were Best Friends, which she supposed was the same thing, except they were actually allowed to spend time with each other. Kanaya thought it was quite exciting being Vriska’s Best Friend. The wild-haired girl would talk to anyone in the form without hesitation, and would drag Kanaya along with her. One lunch time she brought Kanaya over to sit with Terezi and Jade. John was there too, practicing a card trick on Tavros and Eridan.

“I have a brilliant plan, and I think you all should listen to me,” announced Vriska, sitting cross-legged before them.

“Of course we’ll listen to you!” smiled Jade, putting down the flute she had been cleaning. “What’s your plan?”

“I think we should have a midnight feast! We used to do it all the time in my old school. The other girls and I would sneak down to the kitchens on a full moon and get all sorts of biscuits and pop and things and then take our blankets and pillows and eat them under some desks pushed together,” she explained.

Terezi raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that from the Pictures? I’ve seen that one. The heroine is secretly the Princess of Ruritania.”

Vriska scowled. “Yes, but it was my story first. They just used it when I told it to all the writers we used to know in Hollywood. They were always asking me for ideas.”

“Why a full moon?”

“Because it’s more romantic! You’re such a bore, Pyrope. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

Terezi snorted but didn’t say anything further.

“I think it's a tremendous idea,” declared Jade.

“Then it’s decided!” Vriska beamed at them all, a rather worrying expression all in all. “We’ll go at the next full moon. When’s that, Kanaya?”

She elbowed her in the ribs, and Kanaya blushed as all eyes turned to her.

“Erm, tomorrow, I think,” she mumbled.

“Then we go tomorrow!”

***

Then next evening found them sneaking back from the fifth form classroom, empty biscuit packets and pop bottles and blankets stuffed under their arms. It had been a relatively successful midnight feast, to start with. They had made a camp with the blankets slung over desks, and devoured the sweets and cake raided from tuck boxes while playing card games. Things had started to go wrong when they began telling ghost stories. Terezi and Vriska had told more and more lurid, sensationalist stories in a bid to outdo each other. Vriska’s stories seemed to all be taken from popular films, while Terezi’s were taken from the ongoing trials section of the newspapers. Tavros had insisted going back to their dormies after Terezi told a story about an East End serial killer in London who had been hanged the week before. Vriska had rolled her eyes and complained about cowardly custards spoiling everyone’s fun. Terezi had protested that tales of criminals being brought to justice were not scary but reassuring reminders of the effectiveness of Scotland Yard, but Tavros was not convinced. Kanaya had intervened, suggesting that as it was approaching one o’clock in the morning it might be an idea to go to bed anyway, as otherwise they would all have a horrid time in Games in the morning.

And so they were traipsing up the stairs to the floor on which the dormitories were located, Vriska complaining all the while.

  


“Honestly Tavros, why couldn’t you just keep quiet and let the rest of us have some fun. You spoilt a perfectly good midnight feast. You need to learn how to deal with scary things! You’ll never get anywhere at Alternia Towers if you don't!” exclaimed Vriska, throwing a pillow at her.

She failed to duck it and it hit her in the chest.

“I, um, I’ve done all right so far,” she ventured, but Vriska just tutted.

“Yes, but now you’re a fifth former! And come the autumn you’ll be a sixth former and you will have to start acting like a grown up, like me!”

Terezi snorted at this, looking down disdainfully at Vriska from where she stood a few stairs above them.

“There’s no need for you to be so beastly to her. She might be a bit of a wet blanket but that doesn’t hurt anyone. I wouldn’t want anyone taking advice from you, anyhow.”

Vriska fumed. “I’ll have you know my advice is excellent!” She pointed a finger angrily at the other girl, dropping her blanket and pop bottle in the process. The bottle clattered down the stairs noisily, the sound echoing around the staircase. “Bother! Look what you made me do!”

“Oh do shut up, Serket,” snapped Terezi. “We’ve all had quite enough of your whining for one night.”

“I do not whine! If any one whines it’s you, Miss prim and proper law-abiding Pyrope! If you as me you’re just a - a prig! Like your opinion is so important!”

Terezi folded her arms and glared at Vriska.

“You seem to be forgetting you’re still a new girl at Alternia Towers. I don’t know what sort of institution you found yourself at before, but here we don’t go around acting as though we’re the Queen of Sheba the second we arrive!”

“Queen of Sheba! I’ll have you, Pyrope!”

Vriska started up the stairs for Terezi, who threw her blanket at her. At the same time, Kanaya had gone to grab Vriska’s arm and hold her back. In the confusion, they ended up tangled in the blanket together, and toppled down the short flight of stairs, knocking over a bust of Shakespeare in the process. Kanaya found herself sprawled over Vriska at the bottom of the stairs. Her friend looked at her, dazed for a moment, then pushed her off.

“Oof! Kanaya, you weigh an absolute tonne!”

Kanaya hid her blush in attempting to right the toppled bard.

Jade was hurrying down the stairs.

“Oh no! Are you all right? I warned you about the stairs, both of you! Oh dear, I hope we haven’t woken anyone up!”

No sooner had the words been spoken, but a light appeared in the corridor at the top of the stairs.

“Blast! Someone’s coming,” hissed Terezi, hurrying down the stairs to join their party. “We can’t go that way.”

“Back down, then,” suggested Kanaya, clutching before her the blanket that had become the cause of their downfall.

They hurried back down the stairs, all enmity forgotten in the face of their impeding doom. The corridor at the bottom of the stairs lead only back towards the classrooms, and they rushed along it. The light was following them down the stairs. However, when they turned the corner, they saw another light coming from the other direction. Kanaya remembered some of the teachers’ studies lay at the far end of the corridor - someone must have been staying up late for some reason, and was perfectly positioned to catch them!

As one they turned on their heels and raced back to the stairs. The light was gone, the only illumination now being the full moon shining through the arched windows. Barely breathing, they crept up the stairs, lowering their feet gently as to avoid any creaky steps.

Suddenly, Kanaya was aware of a shadowy figure on the landing where she had knocked over the bust of Shakespeare. Imagination fuled by the ghost stories from before, she was struck with the momentary conviction it was the spirit of the bard, awoken and seeking revenge for the impropriety committed against his figure.

Then a hurricane lamp was light, and Miss Renegade was revealed, looking over them all with a stern expression. Vriska looked appalled.

“But how did you know we were here? That sound could have been anything!”

Kanaya tugged on the sleeve of her nightie in an attempt to shut her up.

The corner of Miss Renegade’s mouth curled up as she observed Vriska’s impotent rage.

“Indeed it could have. However, mysterious noises do not often place the head of the Bard back to front,” she explained, gesturing with the lamp to the bust of Shakespeare, now displaying the back of his head to admirers. “My inspiration came from the great man himself.”

“’Twas ever thus,” quipped a voice behind them.

They turned to see Miss Questant mounting the stairs. It had been she holding the light in the corridor.

Vriska groaned. “A pincer movement! I didn’t think teachers were supposed to be so sneaky.”

“We can be far sneakier than you’ll ever know,” smiled Miss Questant. “After all, we were once girls ourselves.”

Vriska looked unimpressed, but to the relief of all, kept her mouth shut.

“A week’s detention, don’t you think?” Miss Renegade queried.

Miss Questant nodded, the light bobbing up and down. “It seems fitting. Now, off to bed with the lot of you. And I don’t want to catch you on any more midnight expeditions! It is not safe to wonder around at night. It is small wonder no one was hurt, if that racket was anything to go by.”

Kanaya tried to shrink behind Terezi and Jade. Now it was twice she had been the cause for criticism by the teachers. Perhaps in future she should think twice before agreeing to go along with any of Vriska’s plans.

The girls trooped off back to their dormitories without any more comment. They were all quite exhausted from their adventure, and fell asleep at once.

All in all, things could have been a lot worse, thought Kanaya as she arrived for detention the next day. She found the other girls already there, awaiting the arrival of the detention supervisor. Kanaya had taken out her maths books, ready to work on a set of particularly tough quadratic equations, when Rose Lalonde swept into the room. She leant against the desk at the front of the room, surveying them all with her violet eyes. Kanaya was sure she was imagining it, but she felt as though Rose’s eyes lingered longest on her.

“I hear you’ve all been rather naughty,” she drawled.

Kanaya felt her cheeks redden as Rose looked at her again, so she buried her nose in her maths book.

“Well, get on with it.” Rose waved a hand at them to start working, and took up her position behind the desk with a slim paperback.

Kanaya chanced a glance up from her equation, to see one elegant, long finger slide between the pages and turn one over.

No, she thought; for her first week at Alternia Towers, things could have gone a lot worse.

***

 

 **Chapter Two: The Lacrosse Match**

When disaster strikes the final of the inter-house lacrosse cup, can Kanaya Maryam save the day for Honeysuckle?


End file.
